Eric Lee: About Eric Lee

Eric Lee is one of the world's leading experts on trade unions and the Internet.

His 1996 book, The Labour Movement and the Internet, published by Pluto Press, was the first in its field.

The website he founded in 1998, LabourStart, remains the leading international trade union website.

In addition to co-ordinating the LabourStart project, Eric Lee provides a number of consulting and design services for the trade union movement in Britain and internationally.

Eric Lee can offer the following services for your union:

Website design: This can include building a website totally from scratch, or taking an existing site and improving it. Our sites are content-driven, based on recognized web standards, easy to maintain and easy to use.

Consulting: We're prepared to sit down with you and look at how your union uses the new communications technologies and to see if we can do things bettter.

Seminars and Courses: We have extensive experience teaching the use of the net to small and large groups.

Articles and Reports: We're had columns in a number of trade union and political publications and are always looking for new audiences. Perhaps your union magazine would be interested in a regular column?

----

We believe that trade unions should use the new communications technologies -- including email and the web -- because these are the cheapest, fastest and most effective means of communication currently available to the labour movement.

But we don't love technology for its own sake. Trade union websites should not be driven by technology, but by the needs of trade union members. That means, for example, that we need trade union websites which . . .

. . . offer timely, relevant and accurate information to members

. . . allow members to interact with the union, with online feedback, discussion forums, live chat and so on

. . . encourage non-members to join the union with online recruitment tools

. . . use the full networking power of the web to link up with online labour news services and other websites

Union websites should NOT . . .

. . . use technologies like animated logos or Flash cartoons when these add nothing to the content of the site

. . . assume that members know how to, or desire to, download software in order to view a particular type of file

. . . show the world (including bosses) their hit count, especially when this is low

----

We have built websites for trade unions, public and commercial organizations at every level -- local, regional, national and international. These include:

Trade unions at local, national, and global levels: Including Amicus MSF, one of the largest unions in Britain, a content management system for all branches of the Communication Workers Union in the UK, the website of Napo - the probation officers union, the Commonwealth Trade Union Council, and the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF) .

Non-governmental organizations: including Meretz USA.

Private companies and industry federations: including Pluto Press in the UK (a secure e-commerce site), Landmark Publishing in Britain, Teldor Wires and Cables and Golan Plastic Products in Israel, and the International Cablemakers Federation, based in Austria.

Government agencies: including the original website of the Postal Services Commission in the UK.

----